Healer paladin

Hey all,

Just sharing this build that is new to me. I always regarded defensive auras as synergies only, tops.

These days a friend of mine introduced me to his healer paladin. I gave it a tought and decided to try one myself.

Skills: Max out Prayer, 1 point to Cleansing and Meditation. Max out Holy Shield and Defiance, for synergy. And pick a combat skill (i chose Fist of the Heavens and Holy Bolt).

Gear:

Plague + Exile + Guardian Angel for max res (you need to be tanky) + Crown of Ages for Res and reduced physical damage (i put 2 perfect rubies for extra life, but you can socket other things). Venom Grip on the hands, Verdungo for that extra vitality and pick a boot that you like. I'm using Mara's Kaleidoscope as amulet and Dwarf Star and Raven Frost for the fire and cold absorb. Stack some charms for all res, faster hit recovery and stuff like that. I don't use any sunders at all.

You can use a CTA on the swap, for further buffing.

The merc: Act 1 merc with Bramble (even a low one), Harmony and Flickering Flame.

With this gear, you get max res on everything (95%, except Lightning, that goes up to 90%) and can stack up to 6 diferent support auras:

Activate Meditation with your paladin + Defiance (from Exile) + Cleansing (from Plague) + Resist Fire (Flickering) + Thorns (Bramble) + Vigor (Harmony). And you can heal twice with your Prayer, as you have Medidation and Plague activated. Im healing 120~ish hit points. If you need, put a single point in Salvation (its a nice addon for ubers).

You just go around and zap stuff with Foth to help out your allies. You wont kill anything (except in Chaos Sanctuary and places with a lot of demons and undead). Your allies will benefit from all your auras, your CTA, and will be buffed as hell. Its a really nice build for that extra kick on P8 farming.

To be a true healer, you should also max Holy Bolt (and spam it for healing).

This build would make you very popular in HC mode. And with so many HRs in equipment, you'd rather make sure not to die...

And if only D2 was an MMO...

Trang Oul wrote: 3 years ago

To be a true healer, you should also max Holy Bolt (and spam it for healing).

This build would make you very popular in HC mode. And with so many HRs in equipment, you'd rather make sure not to die...

And if only D2 was an MMO...

Im maxing Holy Bolt and FOTH. The only things that this paladin does not heal are broken hearts and one-hit-kills

You're retrofitting the holy trinity in a game from before MMOs, nicely done.

if you often run with your group of 8 people, then yes, it's cool and cool, if you run with random people like that, then you have a big heart, but most likely everyone doesn't give a damn about it, to put it mildly. Since I play mostly solo, I wouldn't bother to make such a character, rather I would spend the available character creation slot on a necromancer with a Crossbow or a bear sorceress.

Bass wrote: 3 years ago

if you often run with your group of 8 people, then yes, it's cool and cool, if you run with random people like that, then you have a big heart, but most likely everyone doesn't give a damn about it, to put it mildly. Since I play mostly solo, I wouldn't bother to make such a character, rather I would spend the available character creation slot on a necromancer with a Crossbow or a bear sorceress.

Yeah, i run with a group, that's why. I usually don't play with random people on battle net, its always a bad experience.

Besides the paladin, i have a support barbarian as well

luizgeo wrote: 3 years ago

Hey all,

Just sharing this build that is new to me. I always regarded defensive auras as synergies only, tops.

These days a friend of mine introduced me to his healer paladin. I gave it a tought and decided to try one myself.

Skills: Max out Prayer, 1 point to Cleansing and Meditation. Max out Holy Shield and Defiance, for synergy. And pick a combat skill (i chose Fist of the Heavens and Holy Bolt).

Gear:

Plague + Exile + Guardian Angel for max res (you need to be tanky) + Crown of Ages for Res and reduced physical damage (i put 2 perfect rubies for extra life, but you can socket other things). Venom Grip on the hands, Verdungo for that extra vitality and pick a boot that you like. I'm using Mara's Kaleidoscope as amulet and Dwarf Star and Raven Frost for the fire and cold absorb. Stack some charms for all res, faster hit recovery and stuff like that. I don't use any sunders at all.

You can use a CTA on the swap, for further buffing.

The merc: Act 1 merc with Bramble (even a low one), Harmony and Flickering Flame.

With this gear, you get max res on everything (95%, except Lightning, that goes up to 90%) and can stack up to 6 diferent support auras:

Activate Meditation with your paladin + Defiance (from Exile) + Cleansing (from Plague) + Resist Fire (Flickering) + Thorns (Bramble) + Vigor (Harmony). And you can heal twice with your Prayer, as you have Medidation and Plague activated. Im healing 120~ish hit points. If you need, put a single point in Salvation (its a nice addon for ubers).

You just go around and zap stuff with Foth to help out your allies. You wont kill anything (except in Chaos Sanctuary and places with a lot of demons and undead). Your allies will benefit from all your auras, your CTA, and will be buffed as hell. Its a really nice build for that extra kick on P8 farming.

this idea is so sick, I think I might try it this ladder since I'm getting some new friends into the game!

prajna wrote: 3 years ago

this idea is so sick, I think I might try it this ladder since I'm getting some new friends into the game!

Let us know if this build works out!

All that max res is fine but you'll be pressed to get the resistance to max in the first place.

Throw away Guardian Angel, grab coh. Verdungo is only better than thundergods if you already have enough strength, it's at max roll and even then, the lightning absorb is simply to good to pass up. Also you get max lightning res. I think Waterwalk have max fire res. Cold and poison are somewhat neglible since the vipers are not those poison vipers of Doom anymore and cold is taken care of by that Raven.

With that cta you probably won't have any joy. Since you're lacking +all skills like most casters have, the Bo is on a low level. While the health boost is actually still somewhat okay, the low duration is what's putting me off from using CTA on characters like this. Constant recasting is such a pain in the ass. Furthermore it's more than likely that there will be a barb or a caster with a CTA somewhere in public that most likely is a lot higher than yours. Those people usually get pissed if you override their BO.

Thorns is the most useless thing that exists in D2. The physical resistance, and (in comparison) huge life pools of enemies pretty much negates any uses Thorns might have.

And lastly, and this might be disheartening, the best aura you can give as a Pala in a public random party is probably Conviction and even then infinities are everywhere. After that Fana, then Concentration because those runewords really only mimic a fraction of the power you'd get when having a Pala around natively.

This is something akin to the runeword meta where every character is glowing brighter than a Christmas tree.

If you really want to do something like this you probably should try that build in classic, there are probably quite a few people that would really appreciate an aura support

Also u can thinking about Wisp Projector to add
Level 7 Spirit of Barbs (11 charges)
Level 5 Heart of Wolverine (13 charges)
Level 2 Oak Sage (15 charges)

Flippy wrote: 3 years ago

All that max res is fine but you'll be pressed to get the resistance to max in the first place.

Throw away Guardian Angel, grab coh. Verdungo is only better than thundergods if you already have enough strength, it's at max roll and even then, the lightning absorb is simply to good to pass up. Also you get max lightning res. I think Waterwalk have max fire res. Cold and poison are somewhat neglible since the vipers are not those poison vipers of Doom anymore and cold is taken care of by that Raven.

With that cta you probably won't have any joy. Since you're lacking +all skills like most casters have, the Bo is on a low level. While the health boost is actually still somewhat okay, the low duration is what's putting me off from using CTA on characters like this. Constant recasting is such a pain in the ass. Furthermore it's more than likely that there will be a barb or a caster with a CTA somewhere in public that most likely is a lot higher than yours. Those people usually get pissed if you override their BO.

Thorns is the most useless thing that exists in D2. The physical resistance, and (in comparison) huge life pools of enemies pretty much negates any uses Thorns might have.

And lastly, and this might be disheartening, the best aura you can give as a Pala in a public random party is probably Conviction and even then infinities are everywhere. After that Fana, then Concentration because those runewords really only mimic a fraction of the power you'd get when having a Pala around natively.

This is something akin to the runeword meta where every character is glowing brighter than a Christmas tree.

If you really want to do something like this you probably should try that build in classic, there are probably quite a few people that would really appreciate an aura support

Max cold and Max fire = Exile

Thundergods is a really nice option, didn't think of that. I'll give it a try.

Yeah, and i don't actualy play with random people online. I play with a group of friends and we tought this build aiming to be a Walking Healing Potion, and not a Conviction guy. If i wanted Conviction i could use my dragondin or Infinity.

And lastly, We all appreciate the aura support on our group, no need for d2 classic. We got two healer paladins, so we take turns. Its a really nice char to run ubers or p8 Chaos, you should try it but not with random people that don't care about having a nice d2 experience but with a known party or group of friends.

Bass wrote: 3 years ago

Also u can thinking about Wisp Projector to add
Level 7 Spirit of Barbs (11 charges)
Level 5 Heart of Wolverine (13 charges)
Level 2 Oak Sage (15 charges)

And not only that, there is the lightning absorb! Thanks for the tip!